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The 12th Man Pano

This is a smaller version of my huge 978 MB picture. Picture size 35957 x 7132 pixels. Full version can be seen here http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/149254.

When Seahawks won their place to enter Superbowls, Seatte city honored the 12th man by light up one of city building that showed the number 12. Since the first day I know of this 12th man sign I planned to capture this historic moment picture. My goal is to take a very big panorama of Seattle water front of the 12th man light sign on and reflection to its calm water. First time I went out to take picture of this 12th man building was on the night before Seattle won 49ers. The 12th sign light was displayed beautifully, water was calm. I took around 500 photos. Unfortunately, my photos were useless because I had several technical errors: long lens vibration, or empty dark sky space that didn’t not stitch. Sad, but not giving up, I came to Alki every night after that to find a different opportunity, night after night, rain, strong wind, 12th man light not turn on.

Finally on Saturday February 1, 2014 the 12th man sign finally turned on. I started my night at 7pm and took pictures till 1am in the morning. I took 1,100 pictures. None of my picture series worked for my planned panorama shot. The water was not calm enough and it showed no reflection. Tire, hungry, I went home and ate at 1:30. At 2:45am, one of my photographer friend called and said the water surface was very calm, I went to Alki and set up. As soon as I got there, one of tugged boat left Seattle port, waved the water again. I had to wait till 4:30am and the water calmed. I had time to capture 60 pictures to get this 12th man panorama.

For people outside the US. Seahawk is 2014 American football champion from Seattle, Washington. 12 is Seahawks number.

This pano is stitched from 64 picture, 23 Mb each. I used a Gigapan pano head, Canon 300mm lens and 5D Mark III. It took around 24 hours to stitch and finalized to this version.

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